Star Musing

City life is hard. There’s concrete and steel, pollution, noise, and most of all, light. You can’t get away from the houselights, headlights, porchlights, and streetlights. But sometimes, when it’s late at night, and the sky is clear, and if I stand in one exact spot in the backyard where all the lights are blocked from view, I can see the stars. And for a few brief moments in my city trapped life, nothing exists except the pinpricks in the black velvet of night.

I look up at those distant points of light, and I think about how many other suns there are, billions and billions of them just in our own galaxy. And there are other planets, and maybe even other life. And many other galaxies, even bigger than our own. Trillions of them, just in the known universe. But these stars and planets and galaxies are so far away that we may never get to them. Even with all that’s out there, we’re alone, floating in the dark.

Think about the specific positioning our planet has to our star, and the fact that our star will get brighter as it ages. It means that for life to exist and thrive here, the planet had to be in just the right position, and at just the right time in its lifecycle. Complex, intelligent life could not have existed at any other time on our world. In the billions of years our sun and planet have existed, only in a specific 2% of the lifecycle has it been possible to support human beings. So many things had to come together to make this planet, and produce our diversity of life, and finally give rise to us. The thought is humbling.

But look at what we're doing with it. Our leaders treat our planet like it’s disposable. A thing to be used and thrown away, thinking there will always be more to use. We throw trash on the ground and into our oceans like we don’t need them to live. We kill our plants and trees like we don’t need them to breathe. We slaughter and kill off the animals like there will always be more. We are killing our own home. The planet will still exist, but we won’t be able to live on it. And we have nowhere to go. Our little blue dot in the vastness of space is so rare, and so alone, and it’s as if no one here knows. Or worse, they know and don’t care.

It makes me wonder, as I stand out in the cold night, staring up at the sky, maybe this is what we all need. To stand in the dark, and quietly look at the sky and the distant stars, and think about how small and insignificant we are. Tiny and meaningless in the scale of the universe, and yet rare, and unique, and precious. Maybe if we all took the time to stare out at that endless void, and those impossibly distant points of light, we could find our appreciation and love for ourselves, and for our fellow humans. Maybe we could all find a way to live together in peace and respect, as we journey together on this tiny speck of blue, floating alone in the dark.